“H IS FOR HAPPINESS” My rating: B-
98 minutes | No MPAA rating
The Aussie “H Is for Happiness” aspires to the quirky uplift of “Amelie,” only for the tweener crowd.
Every now and then it gets there.
John Sheedy’s film is set in a postcard pretty town that seems timeless despite the very modern wind turbines that dot the landscape. It’s the sort of place where kids can run free, playing in the nearby forests and ranging far and wide on their bikes without fear. We never see a cop, probably because they’d be superfluous.
Our pint-sized heroine is 12-year-old Candice (Daisy Axon), a buoyant amalgam of flaming Pippi Longstocking pigtails, endless freckles and unstoppable optimism.
Candice is a learning nerd, the kind of pint-sized intellectual who asks incredibly complex questions (the teacher is Miriam Margolyes with a disarmingly weird rotating CG eyeball) just as the end-of-session bell rings. She rapturously soaks up the detailed answer oblivious to the stinkeyes directed at her by groaning classmates, who just want to leave.
Lisa Hoppe’s screenplay attempts to balance (not always gracefully) the essential innocence of Candice’s world view with the grim realities of her life.
Her mother Claire (Emma Booth) is a recluse who never recovered from the death several years before of Candice’s infant sister. Dad Jim (Richard Roxburgh) is a computer repairman and basement inventor embittered by a falling out with his brother. That would be Rich Uncle Brian (Joel Jackson), who made millions off an unspecified creation originally developed with his sibling.
Daisy Axon, Wesley Patten
New to school is Douglas Benson (Wesley Patten), a weird kid who immediately befriends Candice (geeks gotta stick together) and informs her that he is not of this planet, that he was dropped here through some glitch in the time/space continuum.
Candice not only accepts this (throughout the film she addresses him as “Douglas Benson from Another Dimension”) but accompanies Douglas on trips to the woods where they encounter a magical white pony and Douglas experiments with falling out of trees (this is the means by which he will return to his home planet).
It’s pretty much a given that by the end credits “H is for Happiness” will heal all the traumas and divisions within Candice’s clan.
Sheedy’s direction offers a sort of Wes Anderson blend of childlike innocence and adult observation (it’s a lightweight “Moonrise Kingdom”). It doesn’t always work — there are some clunky moments and “H…” lacks the emotional underpinnings of “Moonrise…” — but the enterprise is saved by a series of gloriously absurd outbursts.
One of the greatest of these finds Douglas’ inventing a training bra for his new girlfriend. It’s been pneumatically designed to instantaneously inflate with the yank of a cord, leading to the spectacular sight of a ridiculously bosomy Candice rising from the bottom of a lake to burst forth like a Trident missile fired from a submarine.
The title, by the way, refers to a class project in which the children are to use the letters of the alphabet to come up with things they are thankful for. It culminates in a school talent show performance by our pint-sized protagonists so remarkable that the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers song “Islands in the Stream” should now be permanently retired. It’ll never be topped.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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